Every nursery has a safeguarding policy. Most have a designated lead, a training log and a folder that would satisfy any inspector who asked to see it. And yet, when things go wrong in early years settings, it is rarely because the folder was missing.
It is usually because something was noticed and not acted on. A bruise that was explained away. A change in a child’s behaviour that nobody connected to anything else. A colleague’s conduct that made someone uneasy, but not uneasy enough to mention anything.
Safeguarding lives in the room
In my years as a School Principal and as an inspector, I came to believe that safeguarding is not something a setting has. It is something a setting does, every hour of every day, through the attention of the adults in it.
I call this the Influence of Noticing. What we notice shapes what we think, what we do and the culture we create. And that culture shapes children’s lives.
Why this matters now
The early years sector is rightly being asked to look harder at safeguarding. Inspectors now want to see that it is woven into everyday practice, not just written down. For many settings, that is a welcome challenge. For many young practitioners, it can feel daunting.
A great number of today’s practitioners trained during or just after the Covid years. Their courses moved online, their placements were cut short, and they lost the chance to learn safeguarding the way it is best learned: by watching experienced colleagues notice, question and act. None of that was their fault. But it does mean that many need support to build the confidence that safe practice depends on.
Three questions for every setting
- Would your newest practitioner feel confident raising a concern about a colleague?
- When someone notices something small, is there a habit of saying it out loud?
- Do your team understand why each procedure exists, or only what it says?
If any of those gave you pause, you are not alone, and the answers can be built.
Building the culture
My book Safeguarding Culture: Beyond Compliance in Early Years Settings is written for exactly this purpose. In plain, everyday language, it helps practitioners, room leaders and managers move from compliance to culture, so that keeping children safe becomes part of who the team is, not just what the policy says.
It is Book Four in the Strong Foundations series, and you can find it here:
Because what you notice matters. More than you might ever know.
Join Nursery Matters free, and every Sunday a new practical resource from the Strong Foundations series will arrive in your inbox, ready to print and use in your setting.
This record is one of sixteen practical tools in Safeguarding Culture: Beyond Compliance in Early Years Settings, along with a safeguarding culture audit, a safer recruitment checklist and a 30/60/90-day plan.
